


Lost

by VendelynSilverhawk



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Gen, i'm really sorry this is sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-14
Updated: 2016-10-14
Packaged: 2018-08-22 10:58:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8283436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VendelynSilverhawk/pseuds/VendelynSilverhawk
Summary: Varric never thought he would have to leave his home behind until the moment he saw it crash down around him. Thoughts on the end of the game, Anders' fate, the relationship between Varric the storyteller and Hawke the ordinary person.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a very short, sad drabble inspired by Fleurie's "Hurts Like Hell." Please please please go listen to it, even if you decide not to keep scrolling and reading.

_I loved and I loved and I lost you_

_And it hurts like hell_

_And it hurts like hell_

 

Kirkwall wass in Varric's bones. Some people live for adventure and new places, cannot curb their wanderlust even if they love their current spot on the map. Not Varric. He found plenty of excitement in his imagination, and that imagination was rooted firmly in Kirkwall's stone paths and vaulted mansions and even the bronze slave statues that still stood in the Gallows, remnants of a darker time.

There was so much history and potential- how could he _not_ love this city? It had the Hanged Man. It was where he grew up. It had his void-cursed brother and enough scum of the earth to fill every jail cell in the Free Marches. Really, what more could a storyteller ask for? More than even that, though, Kirkwall was _home_. He could never hear to leave his home. That was asking too much of him.

He didn't expect, though, as he sailed away from that home and felt the keening agony of bone and body and muse and mind torn apart with every burning shoot of flame, to feel another pain alongside it. A pain that oddly enough lessened the loss of leaving Kirkwall behind.

Even against the red-burning night, Varric's eyes were drawn to Hawke's mess of black hair, tossing in the wind as she sat at the mast and stubbornly refused to look at the city they had near-leveled.

What an amazing, unexpected, Maker-damned thing it was that he only just now realized that somewhere along the way these past six years, Hawke had become home, too. He couldn't smother a bleak chuckle. When he first met her, she was just a smuggler with a good reputation and a better name, a temporary ally. Then she was a friend, and a muse when her visage began creeping into his tales, and then a full-blown legend when she became Champion. Even curled in on herself with her face pressed against her knees she looked like something special.

And she still looked like Home.

Andraste's mercy, now he was anchored to a dying city and a woman who was always dying in some form or another, and resurrecting- usually with plenty of fiery destruction to accompany- and making trouble. And the person who destroyed his first home was impossibly precious to the person who _was_ his other home.

"I'm sorry," Hawke rasped, and it took a moment for Varric to realize that she had lifted her head and was talking to him.

"You did your best," he sighed. She nodded in the direction of Anders, standing at the bow with Isabela and watching the retreating fire with a sort of dreadful excitement. He’d finally made a mark the Chantry couldn't go back from.

"No, I meant I'm _sorry_." This time she stressed the last word enough that Varric understood. She was sorry she hadn't killed Anders. Or couldn't kill Anders. Either way, she was apologizing for a failure of retribution and reaction. It made Varric sick.

"Don't be." He sat next to her and didn't say anything for a long time. She just watched him- waiting.

A deep breath. His home was burning.

But his heart was sitting right next to him.

"I want him dead so badly Hawke. You know there's no forgiveness for what he's done," he said. "But I get it. He's still... He's still Blondie. Somewhere in there. Maybe."

"You'll come back one day," she said.

She didn't say "we."

His home was burning. His home was hurting. His bones aches with the weight of the stories that would be told and the truth no-one would believe if he even wanted to share it.

Kirkwall was in his bones. But then, Hawke was, too.


End file.
